Mike Vickers

About

From Wikipedia:

Michael Graham Vickers (born 18 April 1940) is an English musician who came to prominence as the guitarist, flautist, and saxophonist with the 1960s band Manfred Mann. He was born in Staines-upon-Thames, Surrey. At the age of seven, his family moved to Scotland and then at the age of eleven, to Southampton, where he attended King Edward VI school.

Career

Vickers originally played flute and saxophone, but with the increasing popularity of guitars in bands, it was decided that Manfred Mann should have a guitarist in their lineup. Vickers volunteered for this role, though he always preferred playing woodwind. His tough flute soloing on hard blues tracks, such as “Without You”, prefigured the work of Ian Anderson with Jethro Tull five years later.[citation needed] As the group were all multi-instrumentalists, multi-tracking was used to allow Vickers to perform on guitar and woodwind on the same recordings, while drummer Mike Hugg similarly doubled on vibraphone.[citation needed]

He was credited as a co-writer on Manfred Mann’s early hit singles and contributed a few tracks to albums, including “The Abominable Snowmann” and “You’re for Me”. In 1965, his bandmate Tom McGuinness described him as “the nicest one of the group…nice nearly all the time. But when he’s nasty he just can’t be nice about it.” McGuinness added: “He collects saxophones – which we buy for him.”

By 1965, according to McGuinness, Vickers was already “recording with his own orchestra and looks like becoming a definite threat to Semprini”. At the end of that year, he quit the band, although his first solo album, I Wish I Were a Group Again, did not appear until 1968. […]

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In June 1967, Mike Vickers was asked to write the orchestra arrangement for the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love“, which was shown on “Our World“, a live TV special broadcast across the world via satellite technology.

Saturday 17 June 1967 (Mike Vickers is asked to write the arrangement)

‘They’re doing a TV show next week, live from the studio,’ said Dave [Mike Vicker’s agent]. ‘It’s a global telecast, called ‘Our World’. They’ve written a new song.’

‘Isn’t George [Martin] going to do it, as usual?’ I said. I’d worked for George Martin a number of times, supplying arrangements for some of his other artists. But he always did the Beatles’ extra orchestral stuff himself, didn’t he? ​

‘George’s father has just died, and he’s dealing with that over the next few days, and he’s asked if you could do the arrangement for the orchestra on the live show, with you conducting.’

[…] I opened the front door again, seeing a courier out there now – not the grim reaper at all – with a package for me, direct from the publishers for the fab four. I signed for it, thanked the courier, and took the package into the music room. Inside was the acetate, a 10 inch test disc, with a label saying ‘Dick James Music’ and ‘The Beatles’ and the song title ‘All You Need Is Love’. It was official. This was the real thing. The pinnacle.

Mike Vickers – From “A Week in the Life: working with the Beatles on ‘All You Need Is Love’“, 2019

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In February 1968, Mike Vickers contributed to the recording of “Step Inside Love” for Cilla Black, a track written by Paul McCartney and produced by George Martin.

Mike Vickers was an early user of the Moog synthesizer and found work outside his usual composing and arranging jobs as a programmer and performer of Moog equipment in the late 1960s, including teaching the Beatles how to use the Moog during recording sessions for the “Abbey Road” album.

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I also worked with the Beatles on the ‘Abbey Road’ album. My role on that occasion was to program a Moog synthesizer. I had one myself by now – one of the first in the UK – but the one we used belonged to George Harrison. A very small room tucked in at the side of studio 3 became the centre of activity, rapidly filling up with assorted Beatles, and Geoff and George, and myself. A number of the songs received electronic additions from the Moog, and the session went very smoothly, with me setting up hopefully suitable sounds, and making small adjustments while the appropriate Beatle played the keyboard,  until everyone was happy.

‘I think you should charge £30’, said George Martin, when he phoned to ask me to do this session. Of course a pound back then would be worth a million pounds now, so I had £30,000,000 to spend, in effect, for an afternoon’s work. Not bad.

Still, who wants money, when all you need is love.

Mike Vickers – From “A Week in the Life: working with the Beatles on ‘All You Need Is Love’“, 2019

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Last updated on April 5, 2023